My favorite website for everything chickens is backyardchickens.com. It was there that I stumbled upon the idea for decorating chicken eggs for Christmas ornaments. After all, I had tons and tons of eggs and I think they are absolutely adorable. That and I am a bit of an Christmas ornament collector.
Blowing out eggs and making ornaments is not a new thing, just new to me. In fact just yesterday I noticed my Mom had two blown out and hand painted egg ornaments on her tree. She’s had them for years and I’ve never noticed them, interesting!
Let me preface this by stating I am not a crafty person. I try, but crafting of any sort just doesn’t come naturally to me. With that said, if I can do this, you can too, if you are so inclined. I will take you through the steps if you ever find yourself with beautiful eggs you’d love to preserve and decorate.
The first step is cleaning and blowing out the eggs. To be honest this step really boggled my mind, I had no clue how to do it, but someone mentioned taking a large syringe needle and simply pumping air slowly into the egg and it “blows” it out for you! Brilliant!
You make a hole with the needle on each side of the egg, and make the bottom hole slightly larger and simply pump with air and the egg will go out the bottom. I used small bowls and collected all the egg to make scrambled eggs.
Once blown out, you clean the eggs in hot soapy water, rinse well and dry. The quickest method for drying is to microwave, in 20 second intervals to prevent the eggs from exploding.
Then you have beautiful blown out eggs ready to decorate.
Now for the decorating, I really wish I could say I painted those eggs, but really they are rub-on transfers. You can buy a variety of these at Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, or any craft store. They are even available online. I bought different kinds, Christmas, bugs, and some pretty design ones.
Now getting the transfers to stay put does take practice, as you can see I used too much pressure and broke this one.
I found using the edge of the transfer stick works the best for me. It does take a bit of practice.
Some more that I have transferred.
After the transfers are complete, they must be sealed. I used a spray on clear top-coat. Many people use Mod podge, but I found that when I painted it on it left streaks.
I also bought some metallic sprays to give a pretty sheen to the eggs.
Here is the dragon fly with it’s clear coat
and a slight satin finish. I used skewers to hold the eggs while spraying and drying.
Be sure your hands are clean and the eggs are dry, when you are spraying or you could end up with smudges like this.
Once they have dried. You can attach the ribbon and end caps to cover the holes with hot glue or super glue. Here I used a cover and ribbon from a broken ornament. But many people purchase jewelry bead caps to cover both ends neatly. I am still waiting on my bead caps I ordered online to come in, otherwise I would have more finished eggs to display.
And my lone finished egg.
Overall, although there are several steps involved, none are hard to do. The eggs were easy, but just take a few days to complete.
Day 1: Blow out, and clean the eggs and dry. Day 2: Decorate with rub-ons and spray to seal. Day 3: Glue and attach the ribbons and bead caps, let dry.
So tell me would you ever do this?
Those are absolutely beautiful – great job!
So cool! I always think Easter when it comes to decorating eggs, but these make great Christmas ornaments.
Those are so cool! 🙂
Wow…those are so pretty! I would love to try this next year with Easter eggs…even though I’ll have a new babe in arms. My girls would love to try with me, I’m sure.
Gorgeous Jenna! I wonder if you could do something using the boys’ fingerprints for presents?
I love ’em! How cute!
We use to decorate eggs when I was a kid. I recall blowing and blowing and blowing the egg out of the shell. Not my favorite memory. The syringe thing is brilliance!! So cute!
@Mindee@ourfrontdoor, Hmmm, good idea. But what??
@Kimberly, Never too early to start, you could now or after the holidays but before the baby is born.
@Sam, Thanks Sam!
@Joanna @ Starving Student Survivor, True, and I am sure I will decorate some Easter-ish ones next, so many possibilities.
@Dory, Thanks Dory!
@abby, I know Abby, once I learned the syringe trick, so the way to go!!!
@Sweet Pea,
Well, a cross made of fingerprints would be easy or here are a few ideas:
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/xmas/mfingerprint-holly.htm
Or all the manger animals:
http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/egg-dyeing-thumbprints-technique-668394/
reindeer:
http://crafts.kaboose.com/scrapbooking/xmas-kids-fingerprint.html
snowmen:
http://www.alleventsadviser.com/plan/crafts/fingerprint-christmas-crafts-2=
/
Beautiful ornaments! Your instructions are great too.
You have a very sweet blog here 🙂 I have identical twins too, but my babies are all grown up with little ones of their own.
Blessings to you and your family!
Kindly, ldh
Gorgeous!
My motto for next year (2011) is “less is more”. As a society we just go so overboard on a lot, and this sounds like a FANTASTIC idea! Not only to give the kids and I something to do throughout the summer when we have a lot of down time, but a way to be creative and create something beautiful. Thank you so much!
Another twinkie momma from Texas
Sheila
I’m soooo glad I found these!!!! We got 50 chickens this year and I give away as many as we can and have started selling them too, but this is just something beautiful that reminds me of God’s gracious gift in us having these chickens that sometime get to be a burden to us! Would love to find a nativity sillohuete to use on these! Yours are gorgeous!
I just got back from Austria and these totally remind me of the beautiful, ornate egg ornaments I saw there at the Christmas market. What a fun idea for your family to make them! They are so delicate and cute. Merry Christmas!!!
I did this when I was a teenager. (I am now in my 50s) For some of the eggs I took tiny fingernail scissors and cut a hole in the front of the egg. This took many tries and many broken eggs. covered the egg with glitter and filled the opening with angel hair and a tiny nativity scene (from a broken snow globe). then I put some edging around the opening. After 35 years it still hangs on my mothers Christmas tree.
I’ve never done the decals, but I have hand painted quite a few to be displayed on egg stands or hung from nice ornament hangers, trees etc. I do like how yours turned out. Thanks for the share!